Experiences with the Medical Industry

This website has a series of articles that describe what I
have learned from my experiences with the healthcare industry in the U.S. My
experiences include working in the medical industry for over 20 years as well
as many personal encounters with the healthcare system in over 60 years of
life. The articles are divided into two categories. One category is “The
Healthcare Industry,” which discusses fundamental problems with the healthcare
industry in the U.S. The other category is “Specific Health Experiences,” which
describe my personal experiences with certain health conditions. The key
conclusions from the articles are summarized below. The articles describe various
experiences that support these conclusions.

The Healthcare Industry

The healthcare industry maximizes costs and does have
effective mechanisms to control costs. Free market forces have not been
effective at controlling costs or providing optimal services in the healthcare
industry. This results from several factors, including (a) the incomes of
health professionals increase as more office visits, tests, procedures, and
treatments are done, whether or not these actually benefit the patient, (b) patients
have no good way to understand and compare costs, (c) there is no effective
mechanism for dealing with fraud and abuse of patients in healthcare, (d)
“best” medical care is provided without regard for costs, and (e) the strong
financial incentives to increase costs are not controlled by competition or by regulation.
In the absence of other mechanisms for assuring ethical behavior, the threat of
lawsuits has an important role in dealing with incompetence and in limiting the
effects of the financial incentives for practices that are detrimental to
patients. (read full
article)

Healthcare costs can be reduced by (a) patients becoming
more active in questioning doctors and in participating in the decisions about
their healthcare, (b) regulations that force medical providers to implement
competitive practices, such as making information available about the costs and
effectiveness of their medical services, (c) altering the healthcare system to
make the financial incentives for doctors and other medical providers more
aligned with the best interests of patients, (d) allowing Nurse Practitioners
and Physician Assistants to have a greater role in routine healthcare, and (e) developing
medical care with different degrees of risk and cost that are consistent with
the wishes of different patients. (read full
article)

Most types of insurance (e.g., home and car insurance) are
intended to cover the costs for certain rare events that a person could not
cover without insurance. However, health insurance has become a middleman for
virtually all healthcare activities. This middleman role increases costs for
healthcare due to the administrative costs, marketing costs, and profits for
the insurance company. The costs and profits for the insurance companies can
raise the costs for medical care by about 25%. In theory, health insurance
could be beneficial for routine medical care because insurance companies have
the knowledge and experience to negotiate better, more cost-effective medical services.
Most patients do not have the specialized knowledge and experience to effectively
negotiate for themselves. However, these theoretical benefits from health
insurance companies have generally had limited effectiveness in practice. The
Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is an attempt to place requirements on insurance
companies to make them produce the needed benefits for patients.

At present, healthcare is basically a work in progress with
various experiments to try to find something that works reasonably well.
Different strategies need to be tried and compared. The differing opinions
about which strategy is best need to be resolved by actual experience, not by academic
speculations or political ideology.

The politically conservative proposals to reduce government
involvement in healthcare are based on the incorrect assumption that the
healthcare providers will compete with each other, rather than continue the well-established
non-competitive practices that maximize profits. The liberal proposals to
require everyone to obtain health insurance without major interventions to
reduce costs can also be expected to promote significantly higher costs. The
lobbyists for the healthcare industry special interests dominate the political
process to the point that the major choice is between different ways of
enhancing the profits and control of the special interests. (read
full article)

Specific Health Experiences

I experienced the intense pain of cluster headaches for
a few years. In an informal article on the internet, a doctor speculated that
cluster headaches were sometimes caused by a person becoming overheated by
sleeping with heavy winter blanket when the weather warmed in the spring. That
exactly fit my situation. When I changed the blankets, the cluster headaches
stopped occurring. (read full
article)

When I ate a low fat vegetarian diet I became
increasingly susceptible to tension headaches. These stopped after I altered my
diet to include more protein, including nuts, eggs, and eventually fish and
seafood. (read full
article)

I have received recommendations by medical
professionals that were detrimental to my health many times over the years. In
recent years I have rejected about 20% to 30% of the recommendations by doctors
and often seek a second opinion when a doctor recommends an expensive or
invasive procedure. (read full
article)

I require a mattress with a specific degree of firmness to
avoid back problems. A latex mattress that can be adjusted by shifting and
replacing pieces of foam has worked very well for me. (read full
article)